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BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. 



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Handbook Series 



HINTS 



ON 



WRITING AND SPEECH-MAKING 



BY 



y 



THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 




BOSTON 
LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS 

NEW YORK 
CHARLES T DILLINGHAM 

1887 






Copyright, 1887 
By THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 



All rights reserved 
Hints on Writing 



RAND AVERY COMPANY 

ELECTROTYPE RS AND PRINTERS 

BOSTON 



PREFACE, 



The first of these two chapters appeared 
long since in the "Atlantic Monthly" (ix. 
401), and was afterwards included in the 
author's volume entitled "Atlantic Essays." 
Teachers have several times urged that it 
should be separately printed as a little 
manual of literary composition ; and I 
have indeed seen it used for that purpose 
in a college class-room. Now that similar 
suggestions are beginning to be made as to 
the other brief essay, " Hints on Speech- 
making," it has seemed well to present the 
two together in a small volume. The last- 
named paper appeared first in " Harper's 
Magazine" for November, 1886; and it 
is here reprinted with the consent of the 
publishers. 

5 



CONTENTS 



I 

A LETTER TO A YOUNG CONTRIBUTOR 

II 

HINTS ON SPEECH-MAKING 



HINTS ON WRITING AND 
" SPEECH-MAKING. 



I. 

A LETTER TO A YOUNG CONTRIBUTOR. 

My dear young gentleman or young lady, 
— for many are the Cecil Dreemes of litera- 
ture who superscribe their offered manu- 
scripts with very masculine names in very 
feminine handwriting, — it seems wrong not 
to meet your accumulated and urgent epis- 
tles with one comprehensive reply, thus con- 
densing many private letters into a printed 
one. And so many of those who read the 
"Atlantic Monthly " have at times the im- 
pulse to write for it also, that this epistle 

9 



10 Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. 

will be sure of perusal, though Mrs. Stowe 
remain uncut, and the Autocrat go for an 
hour without readers. 

Every author habitually measures the 
merits of a periodical by its appreciation of 
his or her last manuscript; just as a young 
lady is apt to estimate the management of 
a ball by her own private luck in respect 
to partners. But it is worth while at least 
to point out that in the treatment of every 
contribution the real interests of editor and 
writer are absolutely the same, and any an- 
tagonism is merely traditional, like the sup- 
posed hostility between France and England, 
or that which was once thought to exist be- 
tween England and Slavery. No editor can 
ever afford the rejection of a good thing, and 
no author the publication of a bad one. The 
only difficulty lies in drawing the line. Were 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. II 

all offered manuscripts unequivocally good or 
bad, there would be no great trouble ; it is 
the vast range of mediocrity which perplexes : 
the majority are too bad for blessing, and too 
good for banning ; so that no conceivable 
reason can be given for either fate, save that 
upon the destiny of any contribution may 
hang that of a hundred others just like it. 
But whatever be the standard fixed, it is 
equally for the interest of all concerned that 
it be enforced without flinching. 

Nor is there the slightest authority for 
the supposed editorial prejudice against new 
or obscure contributors. On the contrary, 
every editor is always hungering and thirst- 
ing after novelties. To take the lead in 
bringing forward a new genius is as fasci- 
nating a privilege as that of the physician 
who boasted to Sir Henry Halford of having 



12 Hints on Writing and Speech-Making, 

been the first man to discover the Asiatic 
cholera and to communicate it to the public. 
It is only stern necessity which compels the 
magazine to fall back so constantly on the 
regular old staff of contributors, whose aver- 
age product has been gauged already; just 
as every country lyceum attempts annually 
to arrange an entirely new list of lecturers, 
and has often ended with no bolder experi- 
ment than that of substituting GougH and 
Beecher in place of the last year's Beecher 
and Gough. 

Of course, no editor is infallible, and the 
best magazine contains an occasional poor 
article. Do not blame the unfortunate con- 
ductor : he knows it as well as you do, — 
after the deed is done. The newspapers 
kindly pass it over, still preparing their ac- 
customed opiate of sweet praises, so much 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. I J 

for each contributor, so much for the maga- 
zine collectively, — like a hostess with her 
tea-making, a spoonful for each person, and 
one for the pot. But I can tell you that 
there is an official person who meditates and 
groans, meanwhile, in the night-watches, to 
think that in some atrocious moment of 
good-nature or sleepiness he left the door 
open and let that ungainly intruder in. Do 
you expect him to acknowledge the blunder, 
when you tax him with it ? Never ! — he 
feels it too keenly. He will rather stand up 
stoutly for the surpassing merits of the mis- 
shapen thing, as a mother for her deformed 
child ; and as the mother is nevertheless in- 
wardly imploring that there may never be 
such another born to her, so be sure that it is 
not by reminding the editor of one calamity 
that you can allure him into risking another. 



1 4 Hints on Writing and Specch-Makin^ 



^ 



An editor thus shows himself to be but 
human, and it is well enough to remember 
this fact when you approach him. He is 
not a gloomy despot, no Nemesis or Rhada- 
manthus, but a bland and virtuous man, ex- 
ceedingly anxious to secure plenty of good 
subscribers and contributors, and very ready 
to perform any acts of kindness not incon- 
sistent with this grand design. Draw near 
him, therefore, with soft approaches and 
mild persuasions. Do not treat him like an 
enemy, and insist on reading your whole 
manuscript aloud to him, with appropriate 
gestures. His time has some value, if yours 
has not ; and he has therefore educated his 
eye till it has become microscopic, like a 
naturalist's, and can classify nine out of ten 
specimens by one glance at a scale or a 
feather. Fancy an ambitious echinoderm 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. 15 

claiming a private interview with Agassiz, 
to demonstrate by verbal arguments that he 
is a mollusk ! Besides, do you expect to ad- 
minister the thing orally to each of the two 
hundred thousand, more or less, who turn 
the leaves of the magazine ? You are writ- 
ing for the average eye, and must submit to 
its verdict. " Do not trouble yourself about 
the light on your statue : it is the light of 
the public square which must test its value.' , 
Therefore do not despise any honest pro- 
pitiation, however small, in dealing with your 
editor. Look to the physical aspect of your 
manuscript, and prepare your page so neatly 
that it shall allure instead of repelling. Use 
good pens, black ink, nice white paper and 
plenty of it. Do not emulate " paper-spar- 
ing Pope," whose chaotic manuscript of the 
" Iliad," written chiefly on the backs of old 



16 Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. 

letters, still remains in the British Museum. 
If your document be slovenly, the presump- 
tion is that its literary execution is the same, 
Pope to the contrary notwithstanding. An 
editor's eye becomes carnal, and is easily 
attracted by a comely outside. If you really 
wish to obtain his good will for your produc- 
tion, do not first tax his time for deciphering 
it, any more than in visiting a millionnaire 
to solicit a loan you would begin by asking 
him to pay for the hire of your carriage. 

On the same principle, send your compo- 
sition in such a shape that it shall not need 
the slightest literary revision before printing. 
Many a bright production dies discarded which 
might have been made thoroughly present- 
able by a single day's labor of a competent 
scholar, in shaping, smoothing, dovetailing, 
and retrenching. The revision seems so 



A Letter to a Yoitng Contributor. iy 

small an affair that the aspirant cannot con- 
ceive why there should be so much fuss 
about it. 

" The piece, you think, is incorrect ; why, take it ; 
I'm all submission; what you'd have it, make it." 

But to discharge that friendly office no uni- 
versal genius is salaried ; and for intellect in 
the rough there is no market. 

Rules for style, as for manners, must be 
chiefly negative : a positively good style in- 
dicates certain natural powers in the indi- 
vidual, but a merely unexceptionable style 
is only a matter of culture and good models. 
Dr. Channing established in New England 
a standard of writing which really attained 
almost the perfection of the pure and the 
colorless, and the disciplinary value of such a 
literary influence, in a raw and crude nation, 



l8 Hints on Writing and Speech-Making, 

was very great ; but the defect of just such 
a standard is that it ends in utterly re- 
nouncing all the great traditions of litera- 
ture, and ignoring the magnificent mystery 
of words. Human language may be exact 
and prosaic in itself, uplifted with difficulty 
into expression by the high thoughts it 
utters, or it may in itself become so satu- 
rated with warm life and delicious associa- 
tion that every sentence shall palpitate and 
thrill with the mere fascination of the syl- 
lables. The statue is not more surely 
included in the block of marble than is 
all conceivable splendor of utterance in 
"Worcester's Unabridged." And as Ruskin 
says of painting that it is in the perfection 
and precision of the instantaneous line* that 
the claim to immortality is made, so it is 
easy to see that a good phrase may outweigh 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. ig 

a poor library. Keats heads the catalogue of 
things real with "sun, moon, and passages 
of Shakespeare ; " and Keats himself has 
left behind him winged wonders of expres- 
sion that were not surpassed by Shake- 
speare, or by any one else who ever dared 
touch the English tongue. There may be 
phrases which shall be palaces to dwell in, 
treasure-houses to explore ; a single word 
may be a window from which one may per- 
ceive all the kingdoms of the earth and the 
glory of them. Sometimes a word will 
speak what accumulated volumes have la- 
bored in vain to utter : there may be years 
of crowded passion in a phrase, and half a 
life may be concentrated in a sentence. 

Such being the majesty of the art you 
seek to practise, you can at least take time 
and deliberation before dishonoring it. Dis- 



20 Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. 

abuse yourself especially of the belief that 
any grace or flow of style can come from 
writing rapidly. Haste can make you slip- 
shod, but it can never make you graceful. 
With what dismay one reads of the wonder- 
ful fellows in fashionable novels, who can 
easily dash off a brilliant essay in a single 
night ! When I think how slowly my poor 
thoughts come in, how tardily they connect 
themselves, what a delicious prolonged per- 
plexity it is to cut and contrive a decent 
clothing of words for them, as a little girl 
does for her doll, — nay, how many new out- 
fits a single sentence sometimes costs before 
it is presentable, till it seems at last, like 
our army on the Potomac, as if it never 
could be thoroughly clothed, — I certainly 
should never dare to venture into print, but 
for the confirmed suspicion that the greatest 



A Letter to a Voting Contributor. 21 

writers have done even thus. Do you know, 
my dear neophyte, how Balzac used to com- 
pose ? As a specimen of the labor that 
sometimes goes to make an effective style, 
the process is worth recording. 

When Balzac had a new work in view, he 
first spent weeks in studying from real life 
for it, haunting the streets of Paris by day 
and night, note-book in hand. His mate- 
rials gained, he shut himself up till the book 
was written, absolutely excluding everybody 
but his publisher. In a month or two he 
emerged, pale and thin, with the complete 
manuscript in his hand, — not only written, 
but almost re-written, so thoroughly was the 
original copy altered, interlined, and re- 
arranged. This strange production, almost 
illegible, was sent to the unfortunate print- 
ers : with infinite difficulty a proof-sheet was 



22 Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. 

obtained, which, being sent to the author, 
was presently returned in a condition almost 
as hopeless as that of the manuscript. 
Whole sentences were erased, others trans- 
posed, every thing modified. A second and 
a third proof followed, alike torn to pieces 
by the ravenous pen of Balzac. The de- 
spairing^printers labored by turns, only the 
picked men of the office being equal to the 
task, and they relieving each other at hourly 
intervals, as beyond that time na one could 
endure the fatigue. At last, by the fourth 
proof-sheet, the author, too, was wearied out, 
though not contented. "I work ten hours 
out of the twenty-four," said he, "over the 
elaboration of my unhappy style, and I am 
never satisfied myself when all is done." 

Do not complain that this scrupulousness 
is probably wasted, after all, and that nobody 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. 23 

knows. The public knows. People criticise 
far beyond what they can attain. When the 
Athenian audience hissed a public speaker 
for a mispronunciation, it did not follow that 
any one of the malcontents could pronounce 
as well as the orator. In our own lecture- 
audiences there may not be a man who does 
not yield to his own private eccentricities of 
dialect, but see if they do not appreciate good 
English from Sumner or Phillips ! Men 
talk of writing down to the public taste who 
have never yet written up to that standard. 
" There never yet was a good tongue, ,, said 
old Fuller, "that wanted ears to hear it." 
If one were expecting to be judged by a few 
scholars only, one might hope somehow to 
cajole them ; but it is this vast, unimpas- 
sioned, unconscious tribunal, this average 
judgment of intelligent minds, which is truly 



2/J. Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. 

formidable. It is something more undying 
than senates, and more omnipotent than 
courts, something which rapidly cancels all 
transitory reputations, and at last becomes 
the organ of eternal justice, and awards post- 
humous fame. 

The first demand made by the public upon 
every composition is, of course, that it should 
be attractive. In addressing a miscellaneous 
audience, whether through eye or ear, it is 
certain that no man living has a right to be 
tedious. Every editor is therefore compelled 
to insist that his contributors should make 
themselves agreeable, whatever else they 
may do. To be agreeable, it is not neces- 
sary to be amusing : an essay may be thor- 
oughly delightful without a single witticism, 
while a monotone of jokes soon grows tedi- 
ous. Charge your style with life, and the 



A Letter to a Young Contributor, 2$ 

public will not ask for conundrums. But the 
profounder your discourse, the greater must 
necessarily be the effort to refresh and di- 
versify. I have observed, in addressing 
audiences of children in schools and else- 
where, that there is no fact so grave, no 
thought so abstract, but you can make it 
very interesting to the small people, if you 
will only put in plenty of detail and illustra- 
tion ; and in this respect grown men are not 
so very different. If, therefore, in writing, 
you find your theme to be abstruse, labor to 
render your statement clear and attractive, 
as if your life depended on it : your literary 
life does depend on it, and, if you fail, 
relapses into a dead language, and becomes, 
like that of Coleridge, only a Biographia 
Literaria. Toil, therefore, not in thought 
alone, but in utterance ; clothe and reclothe 



26 Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. 

your profound conception twenty times, if 
need be, until you find some phrase that with 
its profundity shall be lucid also. And when 
a writer, thus laborious to do his utmost 
for his disciples, becomes after all incom- 
prehensible, we can try to believe it only 
that inevitable obscurity which Coleridge 
calls a compliment to the reader. 

In learning to write effectively, a news- 
paper-office is a capital preparatory school ; 
for it teaches the use of materials, and com- 
pels to pungency of style. Being always at 
close quarters with his readers, a journalist 
must shorten and sharpen his sentences, or 
he is doomed. Yet this mental alertness is 
bought at a severe price : such living from 
hand to mouth is apt to cheapen the whole 
mode of intellectual existence, and it is hard 
for a successful journalist to get the news- 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. 2J 

paper out of his blood, or to achieve any high 
literary success. 

For purposes of illustration and elucida- 
tion, and even for wealth of vocabulary, 
much accumulated material is essential ; and 
whether this be won by reading or by experi- 
ence makes no great difference. Coleridge 
attended Davy's chemical lectures to acquire 
new metaphors ; and it is of no consequence 
whether one comes to literature from a 
library, a machine-shop, or a forecastle, pro- 
vided he has learned to work with thorough- 
ness the soil he knows. Remember, however, 
that copious preparation has its perils also, 
in the crude display to which it tempts. The 
object of high culture is not to exhibit cul- 
ture, but its results. You do not put guano 
on your garden that your garden may blossom 
guano. Indeed, even for the proper subordi- 






28 Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. 

nation of one's own thoughts the same self- 
control is needed ; and there is no severer 
test of literary training than in the power to 
prune out your most cherished sentence, 
when you find that the sacrifice will help the 
symmetry or vigor of the whole. 

Be noble both in the affluence and the 
economy of your diction ; spare no wealth 
that you can put in, and tolerate no super- 
fluity that can be struck out. Remember the 
Lacedemonian who was fined for saying that 
in three words which might as well have been 
expressed in two. Do not throw a dozen 
vague epithets at a thing, in the hope that 
some one of them will fit ; but study each 
phrase so carefully that the most ingenious 
critic cannot alter it without spoiling the 
whole passage for everybody but himself. 
For the same reason do not take refuge, as 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. 2Q 

was the practice a few years since, in German 
combinations, heart-utterances, soul-senti- 
ments, and hyphenizecl phrases generally, 
but roll your thought into one good English 
word. There is no fault which seems so 
hopeless as commonplaceness, but it is really 
easier to elevate the commonplace than to 
reduce the turgid. How few men in all the 
pride of culture can emulate the easy grace 
of a bright woman's letter ! 

Have faith enough in your own individual- 
ity to keep it resolutely down for a year or 
two. A man has not much intellectual capi- 
tal who cannot allow himself a brief interval 
of modesty. Premature individualism com- 
monly ends either in a re-action against the 
original whims, or in a mannerism which per- 
petuates them. For mannerism no one is 
great enough, because, though in the hands 



JO Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. 

of a strong man it imprisons us in novel fas- 
cination, yet we soon grow weary, and then 
hate our prison forever. How sparkling was 
Reade's crisp brilliancy in "Peg Woffing- 
ton ! " — but into what disagreeable affecta- 
tions it afterwards degenerated ! Carlyle was 
a boon to the human race, amid the tameness 
into which English style was declining ; but 
who did not grow tired of his favorite catch- 
words at last ? Emerson's style promises to 
be read longer, for it unites something of the 
smoothness of the eighteenth century with 
the vital vigor of the seventeenth, so that it 
brings Sir Thomas Browne and Andrew 
Marvell quite as near to us as Pope or 
Addison. 

Be neither too lax nor too precise in your 
use of language : the one fault ends in stiff- 
ness, the other in slang. Some one told the 



A Letter to a Young Contributoi'. JI 

Emperor Tiberius that he might give citizen- 
ship to men, but not to words. To be sure, 
Louis XIV., in childhood, wishing for a car- 
riage, called for mon earrosse, and made the 
former feminine a masculine to all future 
Frenchmen. But do not undertake to exer- 
cise these prerogatives of royalty until you 
are quite sure of being crow r ned. The only 
thing I remember in our college text-book of 
Rhetoric is one admirable verse of caution 
which it quoted : — 

" In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold, 
Alike fantastic, if too new or old ; 
Be not the first by whom the new is tried, 
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside." 

Especially do not indulge any whimsical pref- 
erence for either Latin or Anglo-Saxon, the 
two great wings on which our magnificent 



J '2 Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. 

English soars and sings : we can spare 
neither. The combination gives us an afflu- 
ence of synonymes and a delicacy of dis- 
crimination such as no unmixed idiom can 
show. 

While you utterly shun slang, whether 
native or foreign born, — at present, by the 
way, our popular writers use far less slang 
than the English, —yet do not shrink from 
Americanisms, so they be good ones. Ameri- 
can literature is now thoroughly out of lead- 
ing-strings ; and the nation which supplied 
the first appreciative audience for Carlyle, 
Tennyson, and the Brownings, can certainly 
trust its own literary instincts to create the 
new words it needs. To be sure, the inele- 
gancies with which we are chiefly reproached 
are not distinctively American : Burke uses 
"pretty considerable ; " Miss Burney says, 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. J J 

" I trembled a few ; " the English Bible says 
" reckon, " Locke has "guess," and Southey 
"realize, ,, in the exact sense in which one 
sometimes hears them used colloquially here. 
Nevertheless, such improprieties are, of 
course, to be avoided ; but whatever good 
Americanisms exist, let -us hold to them by 
all means. To the previous traditions and 
associations of the English tongue we add 
resources of contemporary life such as Eng- 
land cannot rival. 

In America, political freedom makes every 
man an individual ; a vast industrial activity 
makes every man an inventor, not merely 
of labor-saving machines, but of labor-sav- 
ing words; universal schooling popularizes 
thought, and sharpens the edge of language. 
We unconsciously demand of our writers the 
same dash and the same accuracy that we 



J^ Hints 071 Writing and Speech-Making. 

demand in railroading or dry-goods jobbing. 
The mixture of nationalities is constantly 
coining and exchanging new felicities of dia- 
lect : Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Africa, are 
present everywhere with their various con- 
tributions of wit and shrewdness, thought 
and geniality ; in New York and elsewhere 
one finds whole thoroughfares of France, 
Italy, Spain, Portugal ; on our Western rail- 
ways there are placards printed in Swedish ; 
even China is creeping in. The colonies of 
England are too far and too provincial to 
have had as yet much reflex influence on her 
literature, but how our phraseology is already 
amplified by our relations with Spanish 
America ! Many foreign cities may show a 
greater variety of mere national costumes, 
but the representative value of our immigrant 
tribes is far greater from the very fact that 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. J5 

they merge their mental costume in ours. 
Thus the American writer finds himself 
among his phrases like an American sea-cap- 
tain amid his crew, — a medley of all nations, 
waiting for some organizing mind to mould 
them into a unit of force. 

There are certain minor matters, sub- 
sidiary to elegance, if not elegancies, and 
therefore worth attention. Do not habitu- 
ally prop your sentences on crutches, such 
as Italic-letters and exclamation-points, but 
make them stand without aid : if they can- 
not emphasize themselves, these devices 
are but a confession of helplessness. Do 
not leave loose ends as you go on, straggling 
things, to be caught up and dragged along 
uneasily in foot-notes ; but work them all in 
neatly, as Biddy at her bread-pan gradually 
kneads in all the outlying bits of dough, till 



j6 Hints on Writing and Speech-Making, 

she has one round and comely mass. Re- 
duce yourself to short allowance of paren- 
theses and dashes : if you employ them 
merely from clumsiness, they will lose all 
their proper power in your hands. Econo- 
mize quotation-marks also, clear that dust 
from your pages, assume your readers to be 
acquainted with the current jokes and the 
stock epithets : all persons like the compli- 
ment of having it presumed that they know 
something, and prefer to discover the wit or 
beauty of your allusion without a guide-board. 
The same principle applies to learned cita- 
tions and the results of study. Knead these 
also thoroughly in, supplying the maximum 
of desired information with a minimum of 
visible schoolmaster. It requires no pedan- 
tic mention of Euclid to indicate a mathe- 
matical mind, but only the habitual use of 



A Letter to a Voting Contributor. $J 

clear terms and close connections. To em- 
ploy in argument the forms of Whately's 
Logic would render it probable that you are 
juvenile, and certain that you are tedious: 
wreathe the chain with roses. The more 
you have studied foreign languages, the 
more you will be disposed to keep Ollen- 
dorff in the background : the proper result 
of such acquirements is visible in a finer 
ear for words ; so that Goethe said the 
man who had studied but one language 
could not know that one. But spare the 
raw material ; deal as cautiously in Latin as 
did General Jackson when Jack Downing 
was out of the way ; and avoid French as 
some fashionable novelists avoid English. 

Thus far, these are elementary and rather 
technical suggestions, fitted for the very 
opening of your literary career. Supposing 



j8 Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. 

you fairly in print, there are needed some 
further counsels. 

Do not waste a minute, not a second, in 
trying to demonstrate to others the merit 
of your own performance. If your wwk 
does not vindicate itself, you cannot vindi- 
cate it, but you can labor steadily on to 
something which needs no advocate but 
itself. It was said of Haydon, the English 
artist, that, if he had taken half the pains 
to paint great pictures that he took to per- 
suade the public he had painted them, his 
fame would have been secure. Like his 
was the career of poor Home, who wrote 
the farthing epic of " Orion " with one 
grand line in it, and a prose work, without 
any, on " The False Medium excluding Men 
of Genius from the Public/' Do not emulate 
these tragedies. Remember how many great 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. JQ 

writers have created the taste by which they 
were enjoyed, and do not be in a hurry. 
Toughen yourself a little, and accomplish 
something better. Inscribe above your desk 
the words of Rivarol, " Genius is only great 
patience." Most bygone literary fames have 
been very short-lived in America, because 
they have lasted no longer than they de- 
served. Happening the other day to recur 
to a list of Cambridge lyceum-lecturers in 
my boyish days, I found with dismay that 
the only name popularly remembered was 
that of Emerson : death, oblivion, or a pro- 
fessorship had closed over each of the others, 
while the whole standard of American litera- 
ture had been vastly raised meanwhile, and 
no doubt partly through their labors. To 
this day, some of our most gifted writers are 
being dwarfed by the unkind friendliness of 



jO Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. 

too early praise. It was Keats, the most 
precocious of all great poets, who declared 
that " nothing is finer for purposes of pro- 
duction than a very gradual ripening of the 
intellectual powers." 

Yet do not be made conceited by obscu- 
rity, any more than by notoriety. Many 
fine geniuses have been long neglected ; but 
what would become of us, if all the neglected 
were to turn out geniuses? It is unsafe to 
reason from either extreme. You are not 
necessarily writing like Holmes because your 
reputation for talent began in college, or like 
Hawthorne because you have been before 
the public ten years without an admirer. 
Above all, do not seek to encourage yourself 
by dwelling on the defects of your rivals : 
strength comes only from what is above you. 
Northcote, the painter, said, that in observ- 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. 4.1 

ing an inferior picture, he always felt his 
spirits droop with the suspicion that perhaps 
he deceived himself, and his own paintings 
might be no better than that ; but the works 
of the mighty masters always gave him re- 
newed strength, in the hope that perhaps 
his own had in their smaller way something 
of the same divine quality. 

Do not complacently imagine, because 
your first literary attempt proved good and 
successful, that your second will doubtless 
improve upon it. The exact contrary some- 
times happens. A man dreams for years 
over one projected composition, all his read- 
ing converges that way, all his experience 
helps : it is the net result of his exist- 
ence up to a certain time, the cistern into 
which he pours his accumulated life. Em- 
boldened by success, he mistakes the cistern 



42 Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. 

for a fountain, and instantly taps his brain 
again. The second production, as compared 
with the first, costs but half the pains, and 
attains but a quarter part of the merit ; a 
little more of fluency and facility perhaps, — 
but the vigor, the wealth, the originality, the 
head of water, in short, are wanting. One 
would think that almost any intelligent man 
might write one good thing in a lifetime, by 
reserving himself long enough : it is the 
effort after quantity which proves destruc- 
tive. The greatest writer has passed his 
zenith, when he once begins to cheapen his 
style of work, and sink into a book-maker : 
after that, though the newspapers may never 
hint at it, nor his admirers own it, the de- 
cline of his career has begun. 

Yet the author is not alone to blame for 
this, but also the world, which first tempts 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. 43 

and then reproves him. Goethe says, that, 
if a person once does a good thing, society 
forms a league to prevent his doing another. 
His seclusion is gone, and therefore his un- 
consciousness and his leisure; luxuries tempt 
him from his frugality, and soon he must toil 
for luxuries ; then, because he has done one 
thing well, he is urged to squander himself 
and do a thousand things ill. In this country 
especially, if one can learn languages, he 
must go to Congress : if he can argue a law- 
case, he must become agent of a factory. 
Out of this comes a variety of training which 
is very valuable, but a wise man must have 
strength to call in his resources before 
middle life, prune off divergent activities, 
and concentrate himself on the main work, 
be it what it may. It is shameful to see 
the indeterminate lives of many of our gifted 



44 Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. 

men, unable to resist the temptations of a 
busy land, and so losing themselves in an 
aimless and miscellaneous career. 

Yet it is unjust and unworthy in. Marsh 
to disfigure his fine work on the English 
language by traducing all who now write 
that tongue. "None seek the audience, fit, 
though few, which contented the ambition 
of Milton, and all writers for the press now 
measure their glory by their gains," and so 
indefinitely onward, — which is simply cant. 
Does a man who honestly earns his annual 
ten thousand dollars by writing dime novels, 
take rank as head of American literature by 
virtue of his salary? Because the profits of 
true literature are rising, — trivial as they 
still are beside those of commerce or the 
professions, — its merits do not necessarily 
decrease, but the contrary is more likely to 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. 45 

happen ; for in this pursuit, as in all others, 
cheap work is usually poor work. None but 
gentlemen of fortune can enjoy the bliss of 
writing for nothing and paying their own 
printer. Nor does the practice of compen- 
sation by the page work the injury that has 
often been ignorantly predicted. No con- 
tributor need hope to cover two pages of a 
magazine with what might be adequately 
said in one, unless he assumes his editor to 
be as foolish as himself. The Spartans 
exiled Ctesiphon for bragging that he could 
speak the whole day on any subject selected; 
and a modern periodical is of little value, 
unless it has a Spartan at its head. 

Strive always to remember — though it 
does not seem the plan of the universe that 
we should quite bring it home to ourselves 
— that "To-day is a king in disguise/' and 



jf.6 Hints 07i Writing and Speech-Making. 

that this American literature of ours will be 
just as classic a thing, if we do our part, as 
any which the past has treasured. There 
is a mirage over all literary associations. 
Keats and Lamb seem to our young people 
to be existences as remote and legendary as 
Homer; yet it is not an old man's life since 
Keats was an awkward boy at the door of 
Hazlitt's lecture-room, and Lamb was intro- 
ducing Talfourd to Wordsworth as his own 
only admirer. In reading Spence's " Anec- 
dotes," Pope and Addison appear no farther 
off than these ; and wherever I open Bacon's 
" Essays," I am sure to end at last with that 
one magical sentence, annihilating centuries, 
'"When I was a child, and Queen Elizabeth 
was in the flower of her years." 

So few men in any age are born with a 
marked gift for literary expression, so few of 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. 4J 

this number have access to high culture, so 
few even of these have the personal noble- 
ness to use their powers well, and this small 
band is finally so decimated by disease and 
manifold disaster, that it makes one shudder 
to observe how little of the embodied intel- 
lect of any age is left behind. Literature is 
attar of roses, one distilled drop from a mil- 
lion blossoms. Think how Spain and Portu- 
gal once divided the globe between them in 
a treaty, when England was a petty kingdom 
of illiterate tribes! — and now all Spain is 
condensed for us into Cervantes, and all 
Portugal into the fading fame of the unread 
Camoens. The long magnificence of Italian 
culture has left us only / Qnattro Poeti y the 
Four Poets. The difference between Shake- 
speare and his contemporaries is not that he 
is read twice, ten times, a hundred times as 



^8 Hints on Writing and Speech- Making. 

much as they: it is an absolute difference; 
he is read, and they are only printed. 

Yet, if our life be immortal, this temporary 
distinction is of little moment, and we may 
learn humility, without gathering despair, 
from earth's evanescent glories. Who can- 
not bear a few disappointments, if the vista 
be so wide that the mute inglorious Miltons 
of this sphere may in some other sing their 
Paradise as Found ? I fancy that in some 
other realm of existence we may look back 
with a kindly interest on this scene of our 
earlier life, and say to one another, "Do you 
remember yonder planet, where once we 
went to school ? " And whether our elec- 
tive study here lay chiefly in the fields of 
action or of thought will matter little to us 
there, when other schools shall have led us 
through other disciplines. 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. ^g 



II. 

HINTS ON SPEECH-MAKING. 

The number of graduates going forth each 
year from our American colleges must be 
several thousand, since the number of under- 
graduates is more than twenty thousand. 
If we add those who are graduates of acade- 
mies — those who have, as Mr. Poore gener- 
ously puts it in his " Congressional Record," 
" received an academical education " — the 
figures will be greatly swelled. The ma- 
jority of all these graduates will be called 
upon, at some time or other during their 
lives, to make a speech, as will also thou- 
sands of young Americans who have never 



50 Hints on Writing and Speech-Making, 

seen the inside of college or academy. Per- 
haps a few hints on speech-making may not 
be unavailing, when addressed to this large 
class by a man much older — one who has 
made so many speeches that the process has 
almost ceased to have terror to him, what- 
ever dismay it may sometimes cause to his 
hearers. Certainly there are a few sugges- 
tions to be made which are not to be found 
in the elocutionary manuals, and which would 
have saved the present writer much trouble 
and some anguish, had any one thought of 
offering them to him when he left college. 

The first requisite of speech-making is of 
course, to have something to say. But this 
does not merely mean something that may 
be said ; it means something that must be 
said — that presses on the mind uncomfort- 
ably until uttered. Kinglake, in his "His- 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. 51 

tory of the Crimean War," declares it to be 
essential to a general that he should have 
some taste for fighting ; for, he says, there 
are almost always as many good reasons for 
postponing an engagement as for risking it, 
and unless the general has sufficient love of 
fight to turn the scale, no battle will ever 
take place. Whether this would be an intol- 
erable calamity is another question, though 
Kinglake clearly thinks that it would. Be 
this as it may, there are always so many 
good reasons for not making a speech, that, 
unless a speaker has a real desire to make it, 
the thing never will be done ; and nothing so 
creates and intensifies this desire as an ear- 
nest purpose. Some people speak from lo- 
quacity or from habit : I knew men in the 
Massachusetts Legislature who could not go 
by a bill to regulate the breadth of wagon- 



$2 Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. 

wheels, without being inspired with a " little 
amendment ; " but, after all, the crotchet of 
the little amendment was what propelled the 
speech, so that even these men talked under 
the pressure of something that they had very 
much at heart. As a general rule, it may be 
assumed that most of the speeches on a 
given question — in a town-meeting, for in- 
stance — -are by those who speak because 
they "have a message to deliver, ,, as Carlyle 
would say. And that is the oratory most 
effective. The words which almost always 
command most attention in any legislative 
body are those coming from men who have 
never before opened their lips there, but who 
have some matter that thoroughly possesses 
them, — usually a local question, or a ques- 
tion of their particular trade or business, — 
on which they utter themselves with a force 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. 53 

such as the members who pass for " orators" 
can rarely bring to bear. It is almost invari- 
able that such a man, being modest, goes 
first to some more conspicuous member, and 
tries to get him to make the speech, and he 
is almost always told that it will be tenfold 
more effective if he makes it himself. Pole, 
in his new rules for whist-playing, says that 
only two things can ex.cu.se a man from fol- 
lowing his partner's lead of trumps — sudden 
illness, or the fact that he has not a single 
trump in his hand. So the only thing that 
can really excuse a man for transferring to 
anybody else the task of making a speech on 
a subject that he has mastered, is either sud- 
den illness, or the fact that he has changed his 
opinion, and has no speech to make. The first 
rule for public speaking, therefore, is, Have 
something that you desire very much to say. 



5<^ Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. 

The second rule is, Ahvays speak in a 
natural key, arid in a conversational manner. 
The days of pompous and stilted eloquence 
are gone by, and it was perhaps Wendell 
Phillips more than anybody else who put an 
end to it in this country, and substituted 
a simpler style. I remember a striking 
instance of this change of manner at a 
Harvard Commencement dinner. The late 
George S. Hillard of Boston, a man of 
much local fame, now rapidly fading, was in 
my youth considered almost the model orator 
for such an occasion — acute, well trained, 
skilful, and in his way even persuasive. For 
many years, however, he absented himself, 
partly through political antagonism, from the 
college gatherings. At last, some ten years 
ago, he re-appeared, and gave one of his old 
and highly elaborated speeches. After he 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. 55 

had sat down, amid courteous but not ardent 
applause, my classmate, the late Dr. Edward 
H. Clarke, who sat by me, said, in a whisper, 
" Is the change in Hillard, or in me ? I 
remember the time when that speech would 
have seemed to me the perfection of oratory. 
Now it utterly fails to move me." Curiously 
enough, I had been myself making the same 
reflection ; and Dr. Clarke himself, being 
afterward called upon, made a plain, telling, 
straightforward statement about the condi- 
tion and needs of the medical school, which 
took a hearty hold of those present, although 
the " classic orator " had failed to reach 
them. There is no question that within 
thirty years our American public speaking 
has been pitched upon a far more natural 

kev. 

»• 

But how to reach that easy tone is the 



56 Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. 

serious question. Many a man has risen 
with the best intention to speak naturally, 
and has been swept away into a false or con- 
strained manner before he has fairly said, 
" Mr. President and gentlemen." It is 
hard, therefore, to answer the question how 
to make sure of the desired attitude. The 
best way, of course, is to be natural without 
effort, if one only could. In that delightful 
book about children by Mrs. Diaz, called 
"William Henry's Letters," the simple- 
hearted boy cannot quite comprehend the 
necessity of being sent to dancing-school 
"in order to know how to enter a room," as 
his fastidious aunts have advised. "I told 
her I didn't see any thing so very hard about 
entering a room. I told 'em, 'Walk right 
in ! ' " But the dancing-school is meant to 
re-assure boys less frank than William 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. 5/ 

Henry, and so all suggestions as to begin- 
ning a speech are for those to whom it is 
not easy to walk right in. 

Tennyson says of manners: — 

" Kind nature is the best . those manners next 
That fit us like a nature second-hand, 
Which are indeed the manners of the great." 

If people are shy and awkward and con- 
scious about their speeches, how shall they 
gain an easy and unconstrained bearing ? 
That is, how shall they begin their speeches 
in that way? — for after the beginning, it is 
not so hard to go on. 

There is one very simple method, — as 
simple as to swallow a mouthful of water 
slowly to cure one's hiccough, — and yet one 
which I have seldom known to fail. Sup- 
pose the occasion to be a public dinner. 



5<? Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. 

You have somebody by your side to whom 
you have been talking. To him your man- 
ner was undoubtedly natural ; and if you 
can only carry along into your public speech 
that conversational flavor of your private talk, 
the battle is gained. How, then, to achieve 
that result ? In this easy way : Express to 
your neighbor conversationally the thought, 
whatever it is, with which you mean to be- 
gin your public speech. Then, when you 
rise to speak, say merely what will be per- 
fectly true, "I was just saying to the gentle- 
man who sits beside me, that" — and then 
you repeat your remark over again. You 
thus make the last words of your private talk 
the first words of your public address, and 
the conversational manner is secured. This 
suggestion originated, I believe, with a man 
of inexhaustible fertility in public speech, 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. 59 

Rev. E. E. Hale. I have often availed my- 
self of it, and have often been thanked by 
others for suggesting it to them. 

In the third place, Never carry a scrap of 
paper before an audience. If you read your 
address altogether, that is very different ; 
and some orators, especially the French, pro- 
duce remarkable effects by speaking from 
manuscript. It is the combination that in- 
jures. So long as a man is absolutely with- 
out notes, he is not merely thrown on his own 
resources, but his hearers see and know that 
he is ; their sympathy goes along with him ; 
they wish him to go triumphantly through. 
But if they once see that he is partly relying 
on the stilts and leading-strings of his memo- 
randa, their sympathy languishes. It is like 
the difference between a man who walks a 
tight-rope boldly, trusting wholly to his 



60 Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. 

balance-pole, and the man who is looking 
about every moment for something by which 
to steady himself. What is the aim of your 
notes ? You fear that without them you 
may lose your thread, or your logical connec- 
tion, or some valuable fact or illustration. 
But you may be sure that neither thread 
nor logic nor fact nor argument is so im- 
portant to the audience as that they should 
be kept in entire sympathy w T ith yourself, 
that the magnetic contact, or whatever we 
call it, should be unbroken. The chances 
are, that nobody will miss what you leave 
out, if you forget any thing ; but you will 
lose much if you forego the continuous and 
confiding attention given to a speaker who 
is absolutely free. 

The late Judge B. R. Curtis once lost a 
case in court of which he had felt very sure 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. 6 1 

— one in which John P. Hale of New Hamp- 
shire, a man not to be compared with him 
as a lawyer, was his successful antagonist. 
When asked the reason, he said, "It was 
very curious : I had all the law and all the 
evidence, but that fellow Hale somehow got 
so intimate with the jury that he won the 
case." To be intimate with your audience 
is half the battle, and nothing so restricts 
and impedes that intimacy as the presence 
of a scrap of paper. 

Then comes the question, How shall you 
retain your speech in your head ? Shall 
you write it, and commit it to memory, or 
merely note down the points ? Some of the 
most agreeable public speakers known to 
me, as, for instance, Ex-Governor Long 
of Massachusetts, habitually write their 
speeches, and yet deliver them with such 



62 Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. 

ease that you would think them embarked 
without previous preparation on an untried 
sea, which they are riding with buoyant 
safety. Wendell Phillips rarely made special 
preparation : his accumulated store of points 
and illustrations was so inexhaustible that 
he did not need to do any thing more than 
simply draw upon it when the time came. 
Yet I remember that after hearing his Phi 
Beta Kappa oration, in which he had so 
carried away a conservative and critical au- 
dience that they found themselves applaud- 
ing tyrannicide before they knew it, I said 
to him, "This could not have been written 
out beforehand," and he said, " It is already 
in type at the 'Advertiser' office." I could 
not have believed it. 

Nevertheless, in the long-run, it is essen- 
tial that one who speaks much, or even who 



A Letter to a Young Contributor, 6j 

speaks little, should acquire command enough 
of himself to say what has not been written 
down. In this case the fourth rule must be, 
Plan out a series of a few points, as simple 
and orderly as possible. They should be 
simple, both for the convenience of the au- 
dience and for your own, since otherwise 
you may lose yourself in subtleties and meta- 
physics. They should be orderly, if only 
that you may remember them by the method 
of natural succession, each one suggesting 
the next, and thus putting as little tax as 
possible on the memory. Where the points 
are wholly detached, you can substitute an 
artificial order, perhaps fixing each in your 
mind by some leading word that will suggest 
it, and then arranging these alphabetically ; 
the object being always to tax your memory 
as lightly as possible, that it may do its work 



64 Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. 

the better. You have now the points or* 
your speech planned and provided — so many 
stepping-stones to carry you safely across the 
stream. 

But points alone are not enough. You 
must hold your audience ; and this must be 
done, not by lowering yourself in any way, 
but by giving that audience variety of food, 
and reaching their minds by facts, fancy, and 
wit, as well as logic. Therefore the fifth rule 
is, Plan beforehand for one good fact and 
one good illustration under eacli head of your 
speech. One is enough, for the chance is 
that the impulse of the occasion will give 
you more. The fact may be from your own 
experience or from a book; but it must be 
brief, clear, and telling. The illustration 
may be grave or gay, from poetry or from 
the newspaper corner, Shakespeare or Arte- 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. 65 

mus Ward : no matter, so that it hit the 
mark. Most people have a sense of humor, 
high or low : all people have more or less 
imagination, however concealed by the stolid 
habits of daily life. George Herbert says, 

" A verse may find him who a sermon flies ; " 

and if he had written "jest" in place of 
" verse," it would have been quite as true. 
But my present aim is to help the inexpe- 
rienced speaker ; and it is therefore well to 
repeat the rule, to fortify one's self before- 
hand with at least one good fact and one 
good illustration or anecdote for each main 
point of the discourse. You will thus make 
sure of distributing your reasoning and your 
relief all through the speech, and will not 
put all the dough in one pan, and all the 
yeast in another. 



66 Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. 

And by way of closing admonition, I should 
give this sixth and final rule: Do not torment 
yourself np to the last moment about yonr 
speech, but give your mind a rest before it. 
To combine ample preparation with a state 
of mental clearness and freshness — that is 
the problem. Who does not know how clear 
the mind is when we wake in the morning, 
how we solve problems and think out per- 
plexing questions while bathing and dress- 
ing, although the previous night the mind 
was inert and dead ? That is what is meant 
by mental freshness ; and what we need is 
to bring this precise quality — this oxygen 
of the mind — into our speeches. The stu- 
dents at Oxford and Cambridge in England, 
after preparing for the severe examinations 
for honors, — far severer than any of ours, 
though the ordinary "pass" examinations 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. 6/ 

for the mere academical degree are not so 
hard as ours, — make it a rule not to work 
at all on the day before the ordeal, but to 
spend that time, if possible, out of doors and 
away from books.. They thus refresh their 
minds, and get rid of that terrible feeling of 
expectancy. 

I have been told by clergymen who 
enjoyed the actual process of preaching, 
that no one could describe the mental de- 
pression they felt on Saturday evening, and 
even on the morning hours of Sunday, in 
looking forward to that exercise, not know- 
ing whether they should succeed or fail. 
There is a rather apocryphal story of Carlyle, 
that he was once driven to despair by the 
noise of some neighboring peacocks. "But," 
said the neighbor, " they do not scream more 
than twice in twenty-four hours." — " Perhaps 



68 Hints on Writing and Speech-Making. 

not," said Carlyle, "but consider the agonies 
that I undergo in waiting for that scream ! " 
It is not the public speaking that wears upon 
a man, it is the waiting for it. Look at the 
faces of the after-dinner speakers at a public 
dinner: how woe-begone till their time 
comes ! how cheerful afterwards ! To make 
your speeches successful, therefore, learn the 
art of completing your preparation before- 
hand, and then indulging in entire rest — 
newspapers, Mark Twain, exercise, any thing 
you please — until the important moment 
comes. 

These are all very simple rules — almost 
too simple, it may seem, to put on paper. 
Compared with the elaborate counsels of the 
books on rhetoric, how trivial they are ! 
Yet I am sure, from observation and expe- 
rience, that there is a good deal of help in 



A Letter to a Young Contributor. 6g 

them; and while they may not secure for any 
man the power to make a great speech, they 
will at least aid him to avail himself of his 
own gifts, such as they are, and bring him 
up to a fair average of successful execution. 
The power of public speaking is probably 
the most transitory of all kinds of intellect- 
ual influence, for it dies with the death of 
its individual auditors, whereas a good book 
keeps on. But it is, on the other hand, the 
most concentrated and telling of all forms of 
mental action, the most stimulating to those 
who hear it, and, by reflex action, to the 
speakers themselves. No writer has any 
echo so intoxicating as the applause of a 
visible audience: no writer can elicit from 
himself sparks so brilliant as those which 
seem to be struck out between your eyes 
and the answering eyes of your hearers. 



"JO Hints on Writing and Speech-Making, 

The best things in any speech are almost 
always the sudden flashes and the thoughts 
not dreamed of before. Indeed, the best 
hope that any orator can have is to rise at 
favored moments to some height of enthu- 
siasm that shall make all his previous struc- 
ture of preparation superfluous ; as the ship 
in launching glides from the ways, and scat- 
ters cradle-timbers and wedges upon the 
waters that are henceforth to be her home. 



THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON'S WORKS. 



" So delicate and yet so strong in the style ; so apt, yet so 
abundant his illustrations ; so fascinating the easy, polished, lei- 
surely diction, — that the literary enjoyment cannot be impaired. 
He has all the charms of Montague without his egotism." — Min- 
neapolis Press. 

THE MONARCH OF DREAMS. 

Price 50 cents. 

" This booklet contains a story of the usual magazine length, 
hut one far above the usual magazine level in its high artistic 
hnish of style and the striking novelty of its theme. There is 
little writing done in America, and, for that matter, little in Eng- 
land, which has a higher claim than Colonel Higginson's to rank 
as abiding literature. In none of his compositions are his best 
qualities more visible and more charming than in this story." — 
The Literary World (Feb. 5, 1887). 

" Mr. Higginson's previous works have neither merited nor 
received, excellent as they are, the praise bestowed on this little 
story. ... It is original in conception, bold in treatment, and 
worthy of becoming a classic in American literature." — Public 
Opinion ^Washington, D.C., Feb. 5, 1887). 

" This fascinating little book will repay the reader well for the 
time consumed." — Christian Observer (Baltimore, Md., Jan. 20, 
1887). 

" This is one of the most charming stories we have ever read. It 
is an allegory, as true to nature as that written by the immortal 
Bunyan, and infolding within its few pages a whole world of phi- 
losophy. It will compare favorably with the best things from the 
pens of either American or English writers. It is in every respect 
a genuine American classic, and that, too, of the first rank." — The 
Christian at Work (New- York City, Feb. 10, 1887). 

"Colonel Higginson's delightful little brochure, 'The Monarch 
of Dreams,' gives us another surprise at the remarkable ease with 
which this charming writer lends his graceful and facile pen, by 
turns, to the daintiest fancies and imaginings that can be put into 
musical verse, the sad problems of suffering humanity, or the 
most practical work-a-day question. Of this tiny volume, one critic 
truly says that it gives 'in a nutshell a world of philosophy.' " — 
Portland (Me.) Press (Jan. 29, 1887). 

" Bears the stamp of a strong, clear writer, and is exceedingly 
interesting."— Utica (N.Y.) Press (Feb. 4, 1887) 

"A short but striking imaginative sketch, which will bear read- 
ing twice, attentively, both for its subtile and suggestive power and 
ior the moral it teaches. ... It is delightfully told." — Presby- 
terian Observer (Feb. 3, 1887). 



OUT-DOOR PAPERS. 

" The chapters on ' Water Lilies/ ' The Life of Birds,' and * The 
Procession of Flowers. 1 are charming specimens of a poetic faculty 
in description, combined with a scientific observation and analysis 
of nature." — Lojidon Patriot. 

MALBONE: AN OLDPORT ROMANCE. 

"As a ' romance,' it seems to us the most brilliant that has 
appeared in this country since Hawthorne (whom the author in 
some points has the happiness to resemble) laid down the most 
fascinating pen ever held by an American author." — John G. 
Saxe. 

ATLANTIC ESSAYS. 

" A book which will most assuredly help to raise the standard 
of American literature. Mr. Higginson's own style is, after 
Hawthorne's, the best which America has yet produced. He 
possesses simplicity, directness, and grace. We must strongly 
recommend this volume of essays, not to be merely read, but to 
be studied. It is as sound in substance as it is graceful in expres- 
sion." — Westminster Reviezv. 

COMMON SENSE ABOUT WOMEN. 

" A thoroughly good and practical book, from the pen and heart 
of Thomas Wentworth Higginson. If one of its short chapters 
could be read aloud every day during the year, in the millions of 
homes in the land, its power for good could scarcely be overesti- 
mated." — Chicago Inter Ocean. 

Price of above books $1.50 each. 

YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY OF THE 

UNITED STATES. 

With maps and over 100 illustrations. Price $1.50. 

" This book is for American youth what Dickens's ' History of 
England ' is for the children of our cousins beyond the sea. Like 
it, it is so clear and charmingly written, that it is scarcely fair to 
call it a ' Young Folks' History ;' for we are sure that the old as 
well as the young will read it. Members of the C. L. S. C. may 
take it, instead of the book required, if they so desire." — J. H. 
Vincent, D.D., President Chautauqua Literary and Scientific 
Circle, 



See page facing title for full list of Mr. Higginson's books. 



LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS. 



